Werner Herzog On Dodging Bullets

Via Greencine: This week, Werner Herzog (he of Fitzcaraldo and, more recently, Griizly Man infamy) showed up one year early for a speaking engagement at Williams College in Massachusetts. "These accidents sometimes have a special charm," he said in defense of the gaffe, and really, if you were a small liberal arts college and you had Werner Herzog showing up unexpectedly, I think that charm would speak for itself.

Herzog went on to speak to students about his filmmaking philosophy - the quest for "the ecstatic truth" - which he said comes through seeking out certain "fundamental" human experiences. "Knowing what it means to be
shot at unsuccessfully. That's a deep experience, when people open fire
at you and you aren't hit. You experience that and you develop into a
human being who knows the human part, knows it better than others, and
knowing the heart of men."